Self-Exclusion, Self-Delusion

A cheeky, and somewhat tongue in cheek, comment recommended John the Gambler's blog for a "real gambler's blog" and while I do include this in my "Other Blogs I Read" blogroll, in part because it's one of the longer running blogs out there, and in part because it can be quite entertaining, a gambling blog it is not.

John gives the impression of a traditional on-course / betting shop gambler who discovered Betfair, had some initial success and then found out the hard way that winning in the brave new world wasn't that easy.

Some of his wins / losses are no doubt true, but there are too many contradictions to take him seriously.

On 29/3/08 he wrote

"All round one of those days where I will be happy to settle for 50 quid profit. I only need just over 100 to hit 5k for the month, so I will be taking it very steady till the end of March.

I would welcome suggestions/comments on how to make money over the next couple of days, as I say I cannot see many. What I call a quiet end to the month."

Then a few hours later, a very brief and dramatic post (John loves drama) read: "Just had a really bad day on Betfair. Time for a long break. Catch you all later. I am afraid this blog is dead. Bye for now. :-)"

We never heard how bad the day was, or what the loss was, but today John writes: "I self excluded when I stuck 10K on a US geggee. Very stupid. Was still 10K up on month but very stupid. Thought the break would do me good. I was 20K up on the month, but lost half midway through the month with one stupid bet."

So in 2008 we were 28 days into the month and "a little short of £5k", but two years later and the profit for the month was actually £20k?

It's a tendency of problem gamblers to remember their wins but forget their losses, and it seems that time has softened the loss for John. The size of the loss is of course irrelevant. I think the important things to note here are that it was serious enough to prompt a request for self-exclusion, and that John is not being honest with us, and possibly himself, about the loss.

£10k on a US horse race? Really? Leaving aside for a minute the fact that without any specialist knowledge, or any history of betting on these markets, this would be a ridiculous market to bet even £2 in, since the post was written late-afternoon (5:41pm), and it was thus still morning in the USA, I have my doubts that US horse-racing was the market where the loss occurred. The truth is out there.